


Release

by Sonora



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Vampire, Blood and Injury, Dom/sub Undertones, M/M, Temporary Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-27
Updated: 2015-11-27
Packaged: 2018-05-03 14:05:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,704
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5294009
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sonora/pseuds/Sonora
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Chuck and Herc don't meet in a bar, even if that's the first time they see each other.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Release

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kaijusizefeels](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kaijusizefeels/gifts).



> So, an elaboration, shall we say, of Lock Up. Kaijusizefeels asked me for the post-turning sex scene, and it got a little out of hand. 
> 
> I wrote most of this on the plane, and the rest during the post-meal Turkey Coma, so my apologies if it's a bit scattered.

Chuck didn’t meet Herc in his bar.

Sure, that’s where he first saw Herc, bleeding grief and reeking of the streets. But Chuck’s was far from the nicest pub in Sydney and far less savory things had happened there than a homeless man drifting in. 

He took little notice of any of it. Wasn’t his business, Chuck figured, what the humans did under his roof. His was a place to hide, a place to hunt, and that was what he wrote the ginger-haired stranger off as; a meal. This human had money, at least, and that was more than most.

The night wore on, same as every night before it. Men wandered in, and women followed, looking for a payday or affection - Chuck had heard, these days, prostitution was supposed to be an aspirational profession. He had a few rooms on the second floor of the building, which he didn’t mind renting out when somebody was clever enough to ask, which some of those soiled doves were; Chuck didn’t hold with violence. He’d seen enough of that in his youth. Experienced enough of it under Pentecost’s claws and Mako’s fangs. Bar fights weren’t common here, despite the roughness of the crowd, and he suspected his had gained a reputation as a good location for illicit dealings. Trouble passed through, but rarely crashed against, his walls.

Last call was at two AM, clean-up a mechanical, gray task. Chuck had found nobody who suited his fancy and he resolved to go for a bit of a walkabout, an old-fashioned hunt - as Pentecost would have called it.

Until he took out the trash.

The bins were in the alley behind the building. It wasn’t necessarily a common occurrence to find somebody out there, but neither was it so out of the ordinary that the sound of _heartbeat_ gave Chuck pause.

No, not the mere presence of the sound.

The quality of it, on the other hand...

“What’re you doing there, mate?” Chuck asked, standing at the edge of the largest dumpster, rubbish bags still in hand.

“Piss off,” the ginger homeless man from earlier snarled at him.

He had a syringe in his hand. A spoon cast aside next to him, still hot. Chuck could smell the burn of the sugar, the strength of the heroin, the weakness of the human’s heart. 

Not that Chuck was an expert in human physiology, but the few times he’d tried heroin - Pentecost had been rather fond of opium, back in the day - the dosage in the human’s hand was greater than what Chuck would have taken himself. 

He had no desire to haul a dead body from his back stoop. 

At least, that’s what Chuck told himself. 

The pain he smelt on the human was... exquisite.

He set the rubbish down.

“Whatever you’re running from, I can help.”

“Piss off.”

It would have been nothing to hypno the man into compliance, with as strung out as he already was, booze and benzos, but that wasn’t what Chuck did. He knelt down instead, close enough to touch, and although the man shied back from his hand, he reached down, wrapped death-cold fingers around the drug. “Death is no mistress to lose yourself to,” he said, not rightly knowing where the words came from. “But I can help. I can. You don't have to do this. I'll... let me help.”

The ginger man gave him one glance, terror and sadness warring on his face, and broke down in tears.

Good enough, Chuck supposed, and bundled the man upstairs.

He left the crushed body of the syringe leaking poppy poison into the asphalt.

+++++

Chuck didn’t taste Herc’s blood for the first time, the night on the street.

It was that first night, holding him up in the shower, tears still coursing down the ginger man’s unshaven cheeks, the thrum of blood in his neck too enticing to pass up. Cleaned of filth, the scent of grief, need, sorrow, loss, reasserted itself, clinging to Herc like a shroud, and Chuck had no doubt that the man had truly intended to end it all out there.

Which would have been a shame.

He was intoxicating.

Chuck bit him there, the foul taint of addiction in the sluggish blood that issued forth from the vein, concealing something beautiful below, and he felt as if a spell had been cast over him; he had to get it out. He had to burn this man clean.

Chuck didn’t bother to lick the wound shut, nor dry the man off. Instead, he laid him down in the tub and straddled him, letting the water run over them, holding his head off the hard edge so gently against the unforgiving sting of his fangs.

He could have turned Herc there, with all the blood he took. Images assailed him as he fed; sand and blood, the angry screaming of a woman, the sour tang of alcohol and the feel of limbs shaking uncontrollably, blind panic and deep rage and the sound of life passing away and the crying of a baby in next room over, sweet and terrible. 

Chuck could have lost himself in that, the feeling of bing _human_ , unlike anything he’d ever experienced before. But he did as he promised - took Herc (for his name was Herc) to the edge of death, the cliff into the darkness an opportunity to shake loose the demons clinging to him with false promises and wicked chemistry.

He held the human there for a long while.

Until he felt, deep within that warm soul, a stirring of will. A desire to live again.

And so, Chuck brought him back. Or rather, didn’t push him any more.

He kissed Herc when he was done, ground his blood-hot erection into the human’s own groin, wishing - for the first time in a long time - that somebody would fuck him. That Herc had the strength in him to drive up into him. But Chuck drank deep, and the feel of weak hands squeezing his thighs, pale lips kissing him back, would have to suffice.

“What’d you do to me?” Herc gasped, voice barely more than a whisper.

“Withdrawal’s a bitch,” Chuck replied, suddenly self-conscious, and realized the water had long gone cold, rivulets of blood inking it red. He’d taken too much. Herc needed more, and replacing it with his own... the thought terrified him, although he didn’t understand why. “I need to take you to hospital. Think you can stand?”

+++++

Chuck didn’t think he would see Herc again, after that.

But the man walked back into his bar, five days later. Cleaner, shaven, less death-like, but no less sad. Just done with drying out in a hospital bed. The strain of it, and the faint pride, mirrored in the downward cant of his shoulders.

“They said I would have died, if not for you,” Herc told him. 

Chuck squinted at the far windows, the sun still just setting outside. “You mad at me?”

It took Herc a few moments to answer. “Wouldn’t be here if I was.”

“Don’t need a thanks, mate,” Chuck said gruffly, not sure what to do with all he could smell on the human. Why it called to him like it did. “Dead bodies bring the cops around.”

“Wasn’t here to thank you.”

“Then why come by?”

“Wanted... wanted to know if you’d... if you’d like to do that again.”

“What?”

And the human’s face was burning. “Fucking stupid of me, never mind,” he grumbled, and turned to go.

But Chuck caught a glimpse; their bodies together in the warmth, the water-slick slide of flesh against flesh, the gentleness of those blunt hands and _when was the last time anybody was that tender with me_...

Chuck didn’t open the bar that evening.

They kissed on their way up the stairs. Through the door to Chuck’s small loft. All the way back to his bed and as they could, during that strange ritual of clothes coming away. Herc’s heartbeat ramped, the most delicious sound Chuck had heard in a long time, because he had done that; he had made his human so eager for him.

But it was then - when Chuck was on his back, ready to find himself some warmth in his endless night - that Herc stopped cold.

“I’ve never...” he stammered.

So Chuck wrapped bare thighs around Herc’s waist and pulled him down, kissing him, gentling him, until Herc found the courage to slick himself up and push inside. 

Chuck closed his eyes, savoring. The stretch, the sensation of being _filled_ , Herc’s heartbeat pulsing within him, hotter than the sun.

Nothing with his sire had ever been like this. Nothing had been like this.

“Oh god,” Herc breathed against Chuck’s chill skin, body shaking but hips stilled. “You’re...”

“I’m what?” Chuck asked, afraid of the answer.

 _More than I deserve,_ he heard Herc’s mind whisper, but the human just kissed his shoulder and rolled his hips. “Show me.”

It was then, maybe, that Chuck fell in love.

+++++

He never let himself feed off of Herc again. No, not his precious human. Herc’s mind spoke of many things that never left his lips, but Chuck managed to get most of the story out of him. Afghan war vet. Chopper pilot. Saw too much. Did too much. Lost his wife on his last deployment, his son, a baby daughter he’d never seen, the whole family vanishing while he was gone. Beat his own brother half to death, after he came home, over some stupid slight. Drove everybody and everything away. Living out of shitty motel rooms when he had money, which was rare; most of his pension had been going into drugs. The only thing Herc had left to his name was his motorbike and his TBI. Death might have been a mercy to him.

But Herc was more than food.

Herc was everything.

And Chuck lived in fear of him. Of what he might do to his beautiful human. Of what his human might do to him.

Until that night when the gods tilted the world, punishing him.

Giving him exactly what he longed for most.

+++++

Herc didn’t meet Chuck in a bar.

He didn’t meet him out behind a bar.

Or in his bathtub. 

Or in his bed.

No, Herc meets Chuck for the first time on the night he dies. 

Laid out on the hot surface of a Sydney freeway, his body is shattered, pain so intense coursing through his blood that he can scarcely feel it. He can’t move his feet; he can’t feel his legs. The bike’s crushing them, crushing him, half a ton of scrap steel weighing him down, killing...

But then it’s gone. 

From his vantage point on the ground, Herc watches it fly off him - _fly_ \- crashing back down too far for his dimming eyes to properly catch. It makes no sense, but there Chuck is, leaning over him, there Chuck’s hands are, touching like he’s something precious, and goddammit it, he loves this boy.

Herc’s loved him from the moment he set eyes on him in that dive bar.

And while he might have been trying to kill himself that night, tonight, this night, there’s nothing he wants more than one more day with Chuck. One more night in Chuck’s bed, making love with him.

He’s such an idiot. Fucked this up proper. Just like everything else in this sorry excuse for a life. Why’d he think anything would be different for him this time?

“Sh-shouldn’t move me,” Herc coughs. His lungs don’t feel right, chest compressed, something not letting him draw a full breath. He’s pissed himself; he could smell it, and wasn’t that a lovely last memory for Chuck to have of him? He might be crying too. God, he hopes not.

“Shut up,” Chuck growls, eyes gone wild and pale. “Ambulance won’t make it here in time.”

“As long as you’re okay, I’m fine,” Herc says, desperately trying to lift his hand to his boy’s face, his beautiful face. That’s what he wants to remember, leaving this world. Chuck catches it, holds it to his cheek. “My beautiful boy.”

“Herc...”

“L-love you, sweetheart. Haven’t... told you that... have I?”

“No.” Chuck’s turning a strange color. “You haven’t.”

“I’m sorry, my boy. I... should have.”

“Please don’t go. Don’t leave me alone again.”

“Don’t think... that’s going to... be a choice, eh?”

“Herc...”

“I’m so sorry, love. I’m so fucking sorry. I’d do anything...” 

“Don’t say that!” Chuck sobs desperately. “Please, Herc, I need you, I need you with me.”

“Love,” Herc begins, and then shock courses through him.

Because Chuck’s got his own teeth in his wrist, tearing it open.

“Stay with me,” he pleads, opening his hand, bright arterial blood coursing down his palm. “If you’d do anything, then stay with me.”

“What are... you doing?” This isn’t the way Herc wants to die. This isn’t the Chuck he knows, that sweet boy near-frantic for every scrap of affection, so eager to curl up in his lap and kiss him like he’s never been kissed before. Hell, Herc had never even considered being with a man before Chuck rocked up into his world, but these few months together have been the best of his life. “Chuck...”

But blood is pouring down Chuck’s hand, and his words don’t make any sense. “Please, love, I can’t face the night without you.”

Herc doesn’t understand - his body is dying, he can feel it, and none of this makes any sense anyway - but Chuck is so desperate, so frantic... he can’t ignore that. He nods.

Chuck presses his bleeding hand over Herc’s mouth, lifts Herc’s hand to his own, and bites.

The sound of sirens fills the air.

Herc feels something in him burn to ash.

Something dark, wonderful, glorious, bloom in its place.

+++++

Waking up alone in an ambulance, in a body bag, without Chuck anywhere within reach, had been more that slightly terrifying. And infuriating.

So maybe Herc overreacted.

Judging from the look on his boy’s face, that’s probably the case.

But everything is very clear now. Very still, certain, strong.

Herc hasn’t felt this good since... well, maybe since the first night Chuck laid down in front of him and showed him how men make love.

Tonight, however, Chuck clings to him, shaking, as Herc walks him back out through the carnage of the police station, out to where a stolen car is waiting. Herc couldn’t rightly say how he found his boy, only that he did. Like he just _knew_.

But then, he thinks he will always know.

Chuck is his and he is Chuck’s.

Vampires.

Crazy world.

Chuck doesn’t speak to him on the way back to the bar. There’s a scent on him, something Herc doesn’t quite know how to identify, but it makes him think of fear, cowering in the darkness.

It’s his turn, he reckons, to be gentle.

He gets them both upstairs, up to the loft that’s become so familiar over the past few months, and sets Chuck down on the bed. The sun is just peeking over the horizon, and Herc feels irritation stirring in his blood. It has no business, looking in at them and what they do together. Before, Herc never understood why Chuck was so paranoid about the light.

Now, though. 

Now Herc understands everything.

Except why his boy is afraid of him.

“You killed them all,” Chuck finally says, voice small, hardly audible over the sound of the black-out curtains unfurling across the windows. 

Herc looks back at him. “I did.”

“Why?”

“Because they were between me and you,” he explains. Gentle, like he’d explain it to one of his own children.

Except they aren’t his anymore, are they? 

Chuck, Chuck though...

“I’ve never seen you kill.”

“No. But I have.”

Chuck shifts, making room, and Herc takes the proffered section of mattress for his own. “We don’t have to kill.”

“Why wouldn’t I kill those who were keeping you away from me?” he asks softly, and runs bloodstained fingers down Chuck’s cheek. “What wouldn’t I do for you?”

Chuck swallows. “My sire killed, but never for me.”

“Who is that? Your sire?”

“The one who made me.” Chuck hesitates. “Like I made you.”

“He owned you.” 

“Yes.”

“He’s the one who hurt you,” Herc guesses - for he’s wondered about this before, but now, like he is, he knows it’s true. That Chuck has been alone too long. _Waiting for me_ , he thinks. “Your sire is the one who made you feel worthless.”

Chuck’s eyes widen slightly. “Yes.”

Herc smiles - he can’t stop smiling, this is all so wonderful - and tilts his head to kiss his boy. “I think you and I should have a different type of father-son relationship.”

Blushing, Chuck shakes his head. “I’m not... I would never think of myself as your father.”

“Of course not,” Herc says gently, so gentle right now, and takes his boy’s face in his hands. “I want you to stand up and take your clothes off for me. Can you do that?”

“Why?”

Chuckling, Herc catches a faint wisp of... thought, perhaps, feeling. Confusion mixed with arousal, bright hot need sparking it to life. “I promised you I would set you free, did I not?”

Chuck nods, slow, confusion knitted in his brows. “Yes.”

“Then be a good boy for me” - Herc barely bites back the word _daddy_ , unsure of where it’s coming from, sure that in his human life, it would have horrified him - “and do as you’re told.”

Movements jerky, the usual finesse absent, Chuck gets up awkwardly, standing just within reach at the foot of the bed. His bloodstained t-shirt comes off first, the alabaster planes of his chest dotted here and there with dark splotches, the blood that soaked through. He unbuckles his pants, and then, remembering he still has his boots on, drops to unzip those. He’s trembling.

Herc has always thought him perfect, but now, now he understands why. His boy, taken at the cusp of full manhood, frozen in time, his beauty preserved. There has never been another man whom Herc thought of as beautiful, and Chuck’s solid bulk is both graceless and inelegant. But he is beautiful, and Herc can’t resist touching him again.

“Careful, love,” he murmurs, raking his fingernail lightly down Chuck’s flexed spine. “We have all the time in the world.”

Chuck straightens then, kicking off his boots and stripping out of pants and socks at the same time. “Naked now,” he says, an edge of defiance in the words. “Still want me here?”

“Shut up,” Herc says, still gentle, hands sliding down Chuck’s body. 

Chuck lets him touch. 

Feels like he hasn’t known the boy before this moment; like he’s getting to know him for the first time. Every freckle, every hint of muscle, is exactly where it was before, but different. Imbued with a power he never noticed before, something Chuck tries to hide from. But he doesn’t need to hide, not now, not from Herc. So Herc looks, loving what he sees, hating the nervousness he sees in his boy’s pale eyes, when he looks back up.

So he kisses him, bites lightly at his ear, savors the shiver as his stubble drags across Chuck’s neck. “My boy, stained with my blood,” he murmurs. “I find nothing about you lacking.”

And Chuck throws his arms around Herc’s neck and kisses him.

This isn’t the way they kissed when Herc was still human, when they treated each other as fragile, breakable things. This is harder, faster, vicious but for the desperation Herc can feel in Chuck’s biting. He laughs and twirls his boy around - the relief of this, the fog of that damn TBI evaporated, certainty replacing all the chronic fear - and throws him down on the bed, crawling up on top of him. He pins Chuck’s chest with his hips and his wrists with one big hand, using the other to pull Chuck’s face up, their eyes meeting again.

“Take my belt out with your teeth,” he orders in his most matter-of-fact voice. “I’m going to tie you to the headboard with it and then fuck you ’til you bleed. I’m not touching that bottle of lube on the floor or your cock. You’re going to let me take you, hard as I can, let me show you exactly how good I can make you feel, now that that pesky brain injury isn’t fucking with my coordination, and when I let you come, you’re going to thank me and beg me to do it again. You’ve made me yours, but now I’m going to make you mine.”

Chuck blinks; a protest is bubbling in him, and before it leaves his lips, Herc can see the moment where it was born, a century ago.

He doesn’t loosen his grip, though.

The last thing his boy needs is for him to let go.

If there is any shred of Herc’s humanity left, it beats now in Chuck’s heart. 

_I’m not your sire. You are nothing less than everything to me._

Chuck relaxes.

Chuck does as he’s told.

Herc doesn’t meet Chuck in a bar. Or behind the bar. Or in a shower, or on the street as his body bleeds out.

No.

He meets Chuck in their bed, the morning they are honest with each other. The morning when Chuck surrenders everything to him. Every secret, every hesitation, every embarrassment, every old pain laid bare and washed away, as Herc makes love to him the way vampires ought.

This morning, it’s Herc’s turn to hold Chuck in the bath, settling the boy in his lap, chest to chest, as the warm water laps at their shoulders. There’s more blood on his hands than there is on Chuck’s, and Chuck watches him with sleepy, satiated eyes as he scrubs it off.

“You’re different,” Chuck says.

That gives Herc pause. “Better, I would hope.”

“Better,” Chuck confirms, and yawns into the crook of his neck. “Love you.”

“Love you too, sweetheart,” Herc murmurs back, and wonders how much it would take to get the boy to call him _daddy_ after all.

Wonders how long before Chuck will do it himself.


End file.
